Thursday, March 28, 2013

So, first things first. Here is the result of too many weekends spent car shopping. And the worst part? We both ended up buying from the first dealer we went to. lol Alex's is on the left - a blue/gray 2011 Mercury Milan. Mine is the other, a metallic gray 2013 Ford Focus hatchback.

This is the official Ford photo. It looks better than mine. (One would hope.) I like it. I don't love it yet. It wasn't my first choice but I needed to go with the Focus with the bigger rebate so I could pay off my previous car and not be upside down in it. I miss my old car. But it was time to let her go, since it was pushing 100K miles and I could "feel" things were starting to go. Don't misunderstand, it's definitely nice to have a new car and I do love the techno-geeky stuff inside. And I'm sure I will love the much-improved gas mileage.

So, on to sewing. Yes, there HAS been some sewing going on here. Not much, so this isn't really gonna be a true sewcation, but any sewing is more than I've done lately.

No, I did not make this top. I bought this one at Walmart a few weeks ago for $5. And I would wear it every stinkin' day if I could. I love it that much. So, all previous sewing plans went by the wayside (yes, I still have that humungous stack of Hot Patterns gathering dust now) as I decided I *had* to recreate it so I could have another one since Walmart only had this one print.

It's a crossover with an all-around empire seam. The front has fold-over facings. There is gathering on the crossovers below the bust and slight gathering center front on both top and bottom. Not so much that it screams maternity. Just enough that it flows over the middle-aged lumps nicely.

The back neckline has a self-fabric turned-down binding as a facing.

So I started digging through the pattern stash for an exact replica. Yeah, I didn't find one. Why is it with hundreds of patterns, we NEVER have the exact thing we want?

Kwik Sew 2694 was the closest.

I last made this almost TEN YEARS AGO. OMG time flies.(Speaking of which, Tuesday was the 1st anniversary of The Day Which Shall Not Be Mentioned. How can I be a year even older now? But it was a good day, spent in St. Augustine with my 3 sons. Yes, 3. My stepson is the one who lives in St. A. Tyler drove down for a long weekend with him. Alex went over Saturday and I joined them all on Tuesday.)

This is the photo from my 2004 review, in which I noted that the armholes were too low/wide. But the underbust seam was hitting at the right place so I thought this would be a good start for a morph. And guess what? I still have the tee so I could actually try it on again. I really don't know why I still have it since I don't think I've worn it since 2004. But sometimes the universe works these things out for you.

So I took out the KS pieces and laid them on my Ottobre TNT pieces and came up with new pieces. Mainly, it was using the Otto armholes/sleeves on the general shape of the KS front. Which I then slash/spread to create the underbust gathers like the Walmart top. I added a fold-on facing to the top section and some additional CF width to the bottom piece. None of this was scientific. I just eyeballed it all. I also decided the empire seam on the back did nothing and wouldn't show in a print anyway, so I just used the Otto back piece as-is, except for widening the shoulders inward toward the neck to match the front of the KS/Otto morph, which meant I re-traced that piece too.

And the finished result? Perfect! It fits JUST LIKE the Walmart top, which in this case, is a really good thing.

Here's a close-up of the gathering.

And the insides. Where, if you're paying attention, you can see that I "fixed" the wrap to be right over left, as it should be. The Walmart top actually crosses left over right. But I never even noticed that until today. Proving that we're a lot less picky about RTW than our own makes. Remember that!

Here's the back, sans empire seam. Which will never be missed, and saved a few steps in pattern morphing and construction.

I still need to coverstitch the hems. The bottom "hem" you see here is merely glued up and waiting for me to change threads on the CS machine, which I'll do after I post this so I can finish the top.

Next up, another morph. A skirt from a mix of the Magic Pencil and Neue Mode. I wear the black Neue Mode skirt ALL the time and it's time for YABS (yet another brown skirt). I won't count them if you won't. ;-)

29 comments:

Wow - I can't believe you got that great top for $5 - and WOW - what a fantastic replica you have created. Love the fabric too. I didn't know that there was a correct way to cross over the top. I will have to remember this.

Great to see you posting Debbie $5 tops??????????The reason men and women button differently is that buttons were the preserve of the rich. Girls were dressed and so buttoned up by others (works best for right-handed nursemaids), boys dressed themselves and so buttoned the other way which is easier to do yourself. I am now nipping off to find out when buttons stopped being too expensive to appear on poor peoples' clothes. It must be a left over from Medieval times.

I am left visualizing sewing my next top when I remember there is a wrong way & a right way to layer the cross-overs, recall that I saw it somewhere in Debbie's blog, and then have to spend several hours re-reading her posts to ascertain left over right.....or was that right over the left....

I have lots of congrats today - beautiful new cars, special time with your boys, a great steal at Walmart's, and a beautiful new top! I made KS2694 a while ago, like it, and haven't made it again. I don't know why it has just sat in the pattern stash. I'm going to pull it out for my Spring/Summer sewing. I like what you did with the pattern. Thanks for the directions!

Your comment about overlap sent me to my closet to see whether my RTW was right over left or left over right. What I found was a fairly even split, something that I never noticed either. I really can't say that I prefer either, but it's interesting from a "style" point of view. BTW, your fabric choice was so Springy, it made me smile. Keep 'em coming.

Thank you for each and every comment. I appreciate them all, but I have to be honest and let you know that I'm usually bad about answering questions. I hope you understand that there just isn't enough time in the day to do everything I want to do.

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